About The Organic Toy Company for Organic Toys and Organic Baby Skincare

ABOUT US

Founder - The Organic Toy Company
Natalie Southgate
Founder

The Organic Toy Company is a family-run business, providing parents with the UK's largest choice of organic toys, which make ideal natural baby toys and considerate eco-gifts for babies and children of all ages. We're passionate about the environment and the well-being of the people who are involved in producing these toys, from the cotton workers to those who create cuddly friends from the organic fabric. We're also concerned about reducing the amounts of toxic chemicals, with which our children are bombarded, seemingly from every direction, in modern life - and increasingly needlessly, as more and more organic choices become available. With this in mind, we now also offer pure, certified organic skincare for babies and children, or anyone with sensitive or eczema/allergy-prone skin.

Eczema

As the parents of three children who’ve suffered to varying degrees with eczema and allergies, we wanted to find toys for our children that they could snuggle up with and cuddle at night, without having synthetic fibres against their sensitive skin. Immediate skin contact with man-made fibres, of course, didn’t ease their conditions! Their favourite (but synthetic) plush toys had a tendency to provoke irritation and itching and encouraged overheating, particularly when they were holding their toys closely for prolonged periods.

Whilst using organic cotton nappies for our youngest two children, we wondered whether it was possible to buy toys made with organic cotton. Despite searching on the Internet for hours (which then, rather frustratingly, turned into whole evenings!) we only managed to find a very limited and repetitive selection across different websites. It was proving to be an apparently impossible, really tedious and time consuming task to find a reasonable choice of soft toys that were made with organic fabrics, on any one website.

WHAT WE DISCOVERED...
Organically grown cotton fibres	Until we started to look for organic toys, we didn’t really know a great deal about the benefits of organic cotton. We just knew that it would be less of an irritant on the children’s skin than the toys they already had and we felt that “going organic” was a step beyond ordinary cotton. We’d previously thought that as a natural textile, 100% “pure” (conventional) cotton for bedding and clothing was the best, affordable, choice we could make for our children, completely unaware that staggering levels of pesticides are used in non-organic cotton agriculture. Once we started to find out more about organic versus non-organic cotton farming practices, we were astounded and appalled.
So with all this in mind, we decided to form The Organic Toy Company, offering to others the opportunity to choose from the widest range of organic toys, with the convenience of providing availability in one single place. We do regularly introduce new toys on our site, so please keep an eye out for new additions to our ranges or check our Latest News page.

Retaining organic standards throughout manufacturing

Once we started to learn more about how organic toys are made and their certifications, we realised there was plenty of scope for a toy’s fabric to lose its organic integrity by the time it became a finished item. Although the fibres in a fabric might have been grown organically and the textile certified as such, it was important to find out if further manufacturing processes, such as dyeing and finishing, adversely affected the purity of the finished organic toy so we could pass that information on to our customers.

OUR ETHOS …

Honest descriptions

To enable you to make a wholly informed choice about what you’re buying for your children, we have set out, in simple and honest terms, the origin, organic composition, certification and processing information within each toy's description.

We’ve gone to considerable lengths to obtain detailed information from the manufacturers of the toys that we stock. This has enabled us to pass that information on to you, which we've done without being selective about divulging only the most favourable details! As far as we know, we are the first company to provide our customers with this degree of transparency and this much detail about each toy.

"Distance" buying

We're very conscious of the fact that when buying online, you are doing so without being able to see or touch the toys until you place an order and they arrive on your doorstep. Therefore, we describe each toy in considerable detail, which we do in the hope that this will help you to picture exactly how the toys look and feel, as accurately as possible!

Organic facts

When preparing this website, we also wanted to ensure that we’ve not inadvertently made any inaccurate or misleading statements on the site about the facts we state regarding organic farming and organic textile processes. We therefore asked a highly respected organic textiles expert for advice, who very kindly reviewed and approved our website’s text, prior to the launch of the site.

Trading Standards

From the very outset of the concept of The Organic Toy Company, we approached and liaised with Trading Standards for advice, guidance and approvals relating to issues such as toy safety, general Internet trading regulations and our Terms and Conditions.

Choice

To the best of our knowledge we offer, by far, the largest retail online choice of organic soft toys anywhere. We are hoping, through the factual information on the site, to raise public awareness of the benefits of organic cotton and to highlight the fact that organic toys are available as a valuable alternative to mass-produced and synthetic high-street toys.

Today’s world sees toxins and pollutants saturating our, and our children’s, everyday lives. On a domestic level, cocktails of chemicals and contaminants can seep invisibly into our lives from so many sources whilst, environmentally, they threatening wildlife species and fragile eco-systems to an unprecedented extent. We believe that many people would prefer to choose organic toys, on discovering their availability and in knowing the detrimental environmental effects that conventional cotton farming has on both the planet and fellow human beings, in addition to the peace of mind that comes with organic toys' purity.

Safe and fun

Of course, as well as meeting all European safety standards and having an environmental and ethical conscience, the natural toys we offer must of course also be fun, utterly adorable and appealing to babies and children, whilst also stimulating their senses and imagination!

Simple terminology

In reality - and like us - the majority of people don’t have a degree in Textiles or Chemistry! Therefore, the terminology that’s frequently used to describe various toy manufacturing processes and the chemicals used, just doesn’t mean very much to the average person. Often, the technical information can be confusing so we’ve tried to keep our product descriptions simple but informative – and in plain English!

In trying to provide you with as much detail as possible, our product descriptions may seem rather lengthy. We did give serious consideration to listing the organic composition information elsewhere on our site, but eventually concluded that the simplest and most logical place for you to find all the facts had to be alongside the toy itself.

Prices

We do our very best to keep our prices as reasonable as possible but the cost of an organic toy really isn't comparable to that of a mass-produced synthetic high street plush toy, which is likely to have far greater chemical exposure and little, if any, environmental or ethical attributes. By using premium natural materials and with costly official organic certification supporting organic claims, higher production costs are inevitably reflected in the price. This is also the case for superior safety testing such as the LGA standard, which is a more stringent than legally required test, with which all of Sigikid's toys are accredited. Like many companies, we are seeing the weak value of the GB Pound against the Euro having a significantly adverse affect on our prices, particularly as many of the toys we stock are made in Europe. As we re-stock certain lines, this is likely to cause price fluctuations.

As demand for both organic cotton and organic toys increases with growing public awareness, these toys will hopefully be able to be manufactured more cost effectively as more and more people opt for them as their preferred choice for their children.

Feedback

Your feedback and comments are very much valued by us, so please do contact us or write in our Guestbook to let us know what you like about The Organic Toy Company, as well as offering any suggestions for ways we can enhance our product range or service. We’re also always interested in hearing of any new organic soft toys so that we can continue to expand the choices we can present to you.